


Amnesia Vu

by PuzzleRaven



Category: Prototype (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Canon-Typical Violence, Ignores Prototype 2, Other, Prison
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-11
Updated: 2019-07-06
Packaged: 2019-07-11 01:39:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15961967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PuzzleRaven/pseuds/PuzzleRaven
Summary: I think I've forgotten this before... Hunger, pain, fire. A glass cell. He just has to remember who he is, why he is there, and why he needs to get the hell out.(AU. After Prototype 1. Discards 2.)





	1. Prologue

 

**Amnesia Vu**  
**I think I've forgotten this before...**

 

Fire...

Pain...

Hunger...

 

The first thing to return was sensation. A flood of something, repairing, replenishing losses, the hollowness filling slightly.Then it was gone. It wasn't enough. Instinct returned, instinct that registered something nearby, dimly, moving to it, gripping it, devouring it. Blind flailing found the next. And the next...

Slowly, blinding hunger near-satiated, thought began to return. Confused, he reached up to rub his eyes. He couldn't find them. His hand didn't seem to want to move. There was a vague awareness of ground under him.

Stand up, dammit. Somehow he found a foot, then the other, tried to straighten from the crouch, unsure why it was so difficult. His balance shifted as his weight adjusted oddly and he lurched to the side before he could stop himself. What he caught himself on must be a hand, and those were feet under him, so if he pushed his weight backwards he should be standing up. He guessed he was. He felt higher, less of himself pressed against the ground, though it would be so easy to let go and just slump. He refused, angry at himself for being so weak.

Impatient, he forced his eyes open, and suddenly sight and sound returned, wavering dizzily as the world snapped into pieces around him. He blinked, trying to clear his sight, as the sound dulled to manageable levels. Reaching up to rub his eyes he froze. A mass of writhing black tendrils squirmed and shifted in front of him, blurrng as he watched, forming into a sleeve and then a hand. It was definitely his hand, he knew the scar he had got when, when...it was his hand because it was attached to him and he could move it. He flexed it experimentally as his vision cleared, trying to dismiss the vision as hallucination.

"Now you've eaten do you feel better?" a distorted voice asked chirpily out of nowhere.

"What?" He looked up, saw nothing beyond the glass wall in front of him. It was dimly lit on his side, but the lights beyond were completely out. Only his blurry reflection stared back.

"Are you feeling better?" the voice asked insistently. He looked at his hands, looked up, saw the world beyond fade into oranges and reds, figures moving.

"Who are you? Where the hell am I?"

There was a pause and then a response equally heartfelt and unhelpful.

"Oh. _Fuck._ "


	2. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

 

            "Okay." The voice - male, vocal modulator, the thought drifted up - sounded as thrown as he felt, but whoever it was rallied quickly. "What do you remember?" He thought about it, trying to reach for memories or skills. He still knew how to speak, he had language skills, so he had not forgotten everything, but his personal life - fire, pain, blackness. He shook his head, trying to clear it.

            “Where am I?” No sense telling anything to people who seemed to have him locked in what looked suspiciously like a cell.

            “You’re back on base, recovering.” There was no pause, no sign the man was lying, as he pressed on. “What do you remember?”

            "Nothing." One of the orange shapes moved and there was the fuzzy noise of someone covering a microphone. He strained to hear and the words became clear.

            "- have been that bomb."

            "Could asset D help?" Four people he guessed, and one sitting down behind a console, probably the one talking to him. Two more shapes stood to the side, probably guarding a door out. Seemed he had heat vision as well as whatever the fuck his hands had turned into.

            "I'll put the request in." One of the figures walked to the entrance. The shape leaned back to the desk and the microphone voice resumed, shockingly loud before his hearing adjusted.

            "OK. This must be a shock to you, but we need you to stay calm."

            "I want answers." His voice was nearly a snarl.

            "OK. The short version is that you're a US military asset." His eyebrow raised under the hood. That did not sound right. "You're on a U.S. army base. You sustained severe injuries in the field from an I.E.D. We didn't know how well you'd recover."

            "A military asset," he said in disbelief. "A soldier." Grimy jeans, a leather jacket, this wasn't a uniform.

            "Not quite." The voice sounded uncomfortable and he could see the silhouette glancing to a figure behind it for instructions as the microphone fuzzed again. He didn't give them time to receive it..

            "If I'm an injured soldier, why aren't I in a hospital?" He saw a head shake and shrug from the watching figure. The person leaned back over the microphone.

            "It's...complicated..." The man, if he could tell through the metallic speaker tones, sounded doubtful and uncomfortable.

            "What's going on? Tell me!" He lashed out at the glass, expecting his fist to bounce. Instead there was a grating squeal like fingernails on a blackboard. He stepped back, staring at his hand. Foot-long black claws extended, flexing as he tried twitching the fingers they had replaced. Hooks and spines grew out below it, covering the arm to the shoulder, where they blended impossibly into his jacket. He touched the join with his unchanged hand, felt the smooth blending. His jacket was a weapon? No, that was not right. He tried to pull the sleeve back on his good arm without cutting himself on the claws, watching amazed as the claws flowed back into fingers, a hand, a sleeve. He turned the cuff back, saw it was cosmetic. Inside the sleeve, after an inch or so of fabric, the material merged into his arm. It should have been disturbing, but somehow it felt right.

            "What the hell am I?" he asked aloud, not expecting a useful answer. In his head he focused on a much more interesting question: what could he do? He could work with this, do more than he had, he knew. If they expected him to be angry and off-balance, playing along would get answers. Then he'd know what answers they wanted him to have and he could start working on getting the real ones. He smacked the glass again, set it vibrating. "What the hell is this?"

            "Like I said, complicated." That wasn't helpful. How could personal memories be gone but his skills, basic knowledge be there if he reached for it? Muscle memory, he recalled vaguely, memories stored in the muscles from repetitive movements. Was that what his claws were? He felt more comfortable when they were out, though the watchers seemed discomforted. Screw them. He was the one in the cell.

 

###

 

_"This may have been a stroke of luck. Move asset D to a secure area. We need to control the information flow."_

_"Understood, sir."_

_"Can we keep it under control? It has an I.Q. off the charts. Several of its component personalities were rated at over two hundred individually."_

_"It can't access them. Intelligence is only as useful as the data it has to work with. Right now it has none."_

_"Then let's make sure it stays that way."_


	3. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

 

He began to pace, measuring out his cell with his steps. Twenty paces long, half that wide, and twice as tall as he was, if he guessed right. Glass walls rose on all sides, a huge rectangle, with the floor and ceiling of the same material. The whole cell seemed to be suspended a few feet off the ground, with a second smaller section linked by double airlocks at one end as the only entry. He could see nothing outside except his own doubled reflection.

            "Why are the lights down?"

            "Crap, you really don't remember anything. That's for your comfort. You're nyctophilic." His comfort or because with one side in darkness and the other lit he could not see out. If they thought that, they didn’t know he had heat vision.

            "Yeah, that's why I'm the only thing lit up." There was a moment when one soldier tried to stop the one that stood up.

            "Ok." He could hear the soldier’s shrug, footsteps, and the flick of a switch. The lights were too bright, and he flung up a hand, lowering his head to let the hood shadow his eyes as they adapted. Raising his head slightly, no sense letting them know how fast he actually adjusted, he took his first conventional look at the room outside.

            Unpainted concrete bunker walls, forty feet high, with strip lighting in the ceiling. The door at the side was where he’d expected, narrower than he thought. The sentries were standing well clear. Cables were clipped to the walls and floor, running to the console that was the only feature he could see, and the banks of computers behind it.

            With the lights up he could see uniforms, details, two distinctly different sets of uniforms. The ones in green seemed to be on edge but the one in black moving back to the console, wasn’t. Not an officer, he’d saluted, so a Specialist or another unit. ‘His unit’ – that thought just felt wrong. He wasn’t a team player. Before he could ask, the door opened.

            "Turn the lights down. Keep it calm." Another figure entered, black uniform, streak of grey in the hair. Without breaking stride the man hit the lightswitch, plunging the room outside back into reds and oranges, and strode across to the console. Had that bastard just called him ‘it’?

            "If you wanted to keep me fucking calm, you’d let me out of this goddamn cell!" he snapped, and was ignored. Now closer to the intercom, he recognised the voice as the one who had left, the one giving orders. The other silhouettes stood, saluting. Screw that. "Command says tell him nothing. Let his memories return on their own."

            "What!?" He was back at the front of the glass in an instant, glaring at the officer.

            "Captain, that's-" the soldier obviously agreed, but was cut off.

            "Those are our orders, Private." The man wasn’t even addressing him.

            "Sir, yes, sir."

            "That's bullshit," he said, furious. "They're my memories. I have a right to them."

            "There are concerns that if we start forcing recall, the memories will be damaged." He kicked half-heartedly at the wall, knowing the sense of it, and still wanting to kill something.

            "So where's my quarters?"

            "Maintain total containment until memories return," the officer answered, still not to him.

            "Right here." The Private sounded apologetic.

            "Oh, fuck that." There was no reply. He began to pace, dragging his claws along the glass, enjoying the reaction from the people outside to the high-pitched grating noise. Odd. There was a roughness to the surface, like embedded wires, and sparks. He didn’t know but something nudged him that sparks weren’t usual on glass. There was something strange about the material.

            "You were hit by the I.E.D. Until we know about long term effects, keeping you under observation is safest." The voice rushed to placate him, and he stopped the noise.

            "For you or me?" He was surprised at his own voice, the darker tone that made it a threat.

            "Both." So he was being kept in a glass cell under armed guard for his own benefit? Why didn't he believe that?     

            "Then aren't you going to put a blanket or something in here?" The answer left him blinking.

            "You don't sleep."

            "I don't sleep?" The stunned incredulousness wasn't feigned. He tried to think back. He could remember snuggling up with his girlfriend/husband/wife/lover/parents/children...He reeled, pressing his hands to his head and the flash of memory was gone before he could grasp it. There was a significant pause beyond the glass as the people moved uneasily before the figure leaned forward to the mic.

            "You don't have a bathroom either." The voice was mocking. "Guess why?"

            "Fuck off."

            "If you do that, the lab boys would love to watch." He was being baited, he knew and the growl rose anyway. He didn't care. "Your sense of humour get blown up as well?"

            "Food? Water?"

            "Water’s not an issue. Or food. You just ate enough for half a platoon."

            "Oh, for fuck’s sake." He slumped down, back against the glass. He really wanted to kill someone.

 ###

_"The lab boys are getting twitchy. They want to get down to the tests."_

_"Mission first. Once that is complete and we're certain it is stable, then they get the go-ahead. If they push, remind them how much easier a co-operative subject makes things - for the initial stages. After that it won't matter."_

            _"Why wasn't it put in heavy containment when it was retrieved?"_

__"_ We didn't think it would survive the experience. It was certainly unexpected that it would regenerate so completely. For now it is quiescent, contained, and obedient. Let's not escalate until we have to."_


End file.
